An interview with… Professor Alison Wearden Frances C. Sherratt MSc1
1Roy Castle Lung Cancer Research Programme, Department of Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Alison Wearden is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Manchester and Director of the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology. Presently, she is also co-editor of the British Journal of Health Psychology. Her research interests include understanding and managing chronic illness, particularly chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), focusing on the roles of illness cognitions and interpersonal factors.
Frances Sherratt is a third-year PhD student at the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on lung cancer risk awareness and future smoking behaviour but she is also exploring electronic cigarette use. Frances recently attended a keynote talk by Alison at the BPS Division of Health Psychology Annual Conference 2014, where she became more familiar with Alison’s work.
Frances:You delivered an informative keynote talk in September at the BPS Division of Health Psychology (DHP) Conference, whereby you reviewed the evidence base for CFS treatment and described the interpersonal context in which CFS is managed. I wondered if you could give those who didn’t hear your talk a brief overview? Also, which direction do you see the future of your research travelling in and how did you find the response to your talk?
Alison: Well my talk was about the interpersonal context of fatigue and it arose from my interest in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) that I’ve had for quite a long time. I talked a bit about CFS, then I talked about some recent work I’ve done with some PhD students, looking at how family members impact on patients and their ability to manage their fatigue, and so on. In terms of the future direction of that work, I am actually, currently putting together a programme of work. What I want to do is to develop interventions to help both partners or carers of people with CFS both to be less distressed and to feel that they are helping and supporting patients better; and also, via doing that, to help the patients because I believe that if the patients have a partner or a carer who’s better able to support them, it’ll be better for the patient. I did get quite a lot of good feedback actually from the talk, quite a lot of people emailed and said that they’d enjoyed it, so that was good because it was a very nerve racking experience to do.
Frances:What other projects are you involved with presently?
I’ve got another PhD student who’s interviewing carers of people who’ve recently been diagnosed with dementia using the Expressed Emotion paradigm, which I talked about in my keynote. This work examines how Expressed Emotion in carers of people who’ve recently been diagnosed with dementia impacts on their adjustment to the diagnosis. We’re not talking about people who are very cognitively impaired, but people with more mild impairment, and we are particularly interested in emotional responses and adjustment to dementia.
Frances:During the BPS DHP Conference, I came across a number of PhD students who were considering embarking on the Stage 2 Independent Route to establish a career as a registered Health Psychologist. However, a number of people I spoke to felt unsure about this commitment due to money, time, or feeling uncertain as to how valuable this achievement would be for their career development. I wondered what you would advise students in this position?
Alison: In order to become a registered Health Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council which enables you to practice as a Health Psychologist you need to do a stage 2 qualification. This can be done as part of a professional doctorate at a University, or independently via the BPS. Stage 2 is a doctoral level qualification but doesn’t give you a PhD, although some people do the Stage 2 training alongside a PhD. Whether you do Stage 2 or not depends on what you want to do with your career. If you want to be an academic Health Psychologist, you don’tneedto do Stage 2 training but if you want to do consultancy, training other health care professionals, or work with patients or service users, you should do it.
In terms of the way we train our Health Psychologists, I don’t think it’s ideal as the training is far too long and complicated (and costly) and I think it would be good if eventually, we could move towards a more integrated system, like Clinical Psychology perhaps. But I do think that Health Psychology is different from Clinical Psychology, in that most many Health Psychologists aren’t working with people on an individual, one-to-one level. Quite often they’re developing interventions on a population level, so it’s a different set of skills. So from the point of view of my advice, I wouldn’t give generic advice, I would ask a person what they want to do with their career.
Frances:Who or what would you say influenced you to become a Health Psychologist?
Alison: It’s completely accidental (laughs)! I did a degree in Psychology, then I trained as a Probation Officer – I was a Probation Officer for a long time, then I stayed at home with my kids, then I accidentally came back into research in Psychology and I accidentally got a job in CFS. So I started to get interested in it and then I got an opportunity to do a PhD in diabetes and it just sort of happened to me I’m afraid, I didn’t really choose it - it just happened to me!
Frances:How would you describe a “typical” day for you?
also I do some ClinPsyD students as well or in meetings with research collaborators or people that I’m working on projects with or we’re putting together a funded project.
I think, as you become more senior in this field particularly, you do less hands-on writing and data manipulation yourself and you do a lot more talking to other people and managing other people and so on. I actually would like to spend more time writing and thinking, I really enjoy the hands-on experience of doing research, looking at data and writing it up but I have just started a sabbatical so hopefully, I’ll be able to do a bit more of that this year.
Frances:What would you say you find most challenging? And are there any aspects you still find challenging on a daily basis?
Alison: Because I’m a Health Psychologist with an interest in applied work and work with patients, I do a lot of negotiating and working with the NHS (I’ve got nothing against the NHS, in fact I’m 100% all for it!) but I spend a lot of time talking to people in services about what working together what I need them to do for me, can they please do this for me, would they be able to refer these people to me, and who is going to pay for the costs of treatment and so on. You spend mountains of time doing that sort of thing, I find that challenging.
Frances:You work within the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology, which is a recently developed centre comprising of internationally renowned Health Psychologists and research teams. I wondered whether and to what extent you feel that the development of the Centre has inspired or driven positive change in relation to the development, awareness or acceptance of Health Psychology across academic or clinical disciplines either locally or nationally?
Alison:A bit of history on the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology – a few years ago a new Dean was appointed to the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences here and he was very keen on building up Health Psychology. This was a fantastic opportunity and he put some money into it and we recruited some new, very good staff at different levels – both senior staff and earlier career staff, including a visiting Professor from the United States. We launched the Centre in October 2013 and I think in Manchester, the Centre has raised the visibility of Health Psychology enormously. We’re really grateful to both the Faculty and to the School for supporting us. I think that having the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology has put us on the UK Health Psychology map more.
In terms of our influence and the visibility of Health Psychology in more applied and clinical settings, certainly, we have developed very good links with Public Health in the Northwest, we’re starting to develop links with Clinical Commissioning Groups and things like that. But I think that the visibility of Health Psychology still needs to be raised more and what I think would be really important is if we could have more Health Psychology jobs in the health service because there aren’t that many.
